Legitimate use of military force against state-sponsored - Air University

To provide this clear framework for decisionmaking, this chapter pursues the following
line of reasoning: What is terrorism? How does international law define terrorism? What other
terminology must we understand? What is international terrorism? In what ways do states
involve themselves with terrorists? What distinguishes between state sponsorship, state support,
state toleration, and state inaction? How serious is the terrorist threat? Is it a recent threat or does
it have historical antecedents? Do statistics support the conclusion that the threat is serious?
What other factors should we consider to place the magnitude of the challenge into the proper
perspective?
What Is Terrorism?
According to Darrell M. Trent, associate director and senior research fellow, Hoover
Institution, terrorism has “no shared definition.” 2 Brian Jenkins of the Rand Corporation writes
that terrorism is a “fad word used promiscuously. . . . What we have, in sum is the sloppy use
of a word that is rather imprecisely defined to begin with.” 3 Others have noted that it is a term
“with various connotations and no singular meaning” 4 and that terrorism is a term in common use
[having] little common meaning.” 5 The term terrorism is an emotive word with negative
connotations: “Terrorism, like beauty, remains in the eye of the beholder.” 6 According to
psychologist H. H. A. Cooper, “terrorism is thus an easily recognized activity of bad character,
subjectively determined and shaped by social and political considerations.” 7
Dutch political scientist Alex P. Schmid, in Political Terrorism, reviewed more than 140
definitions of terrorism written between 1936 and 1981. From these he identified 22 elements
and 20 purposes or functions of terrorism. The five most frequently identified elements were:
violence or force, political purpose, terror or fear, threat, and anticipated psychological effects or
reactions by third parties.’ The five most frequently identified purposes or functions were to:
terrorize or put the public in fear, provoke indiscriminate repression or countermeasures by
established authorities, mobilize the forces of terrorism or immobilize the forces of the
established authorities, affect public opinion in a positive or negative way, and seize political
power or overthrow regimes. 9
Although Schmid’s study highlights the diversity of views on terrorism, it also offers
some general-impressions of what terrorism is about. But these impressions are only vague
feelings: political violence, fear, innocent victims, third-party influence, and criminal and
warlike activity. Lacking a common definition of terrorism creates problems of communication
and understanding. Absent an agreed-on definition, statistics must be compiled on the basis of
assumptions about terrorism. Without a universal definition or standard of what terrorism is, all
data bases and statistical collections on terrorism are suspect. To appreciate fully the statistics
offered, the assumptions underlying the collection of the data must be stated. Unless these
assumptions are stated, comparison of data collected by various organizations, groups, and
individuals is extremely difficult if not impossible. Not only are assumptions likely to differ from
compiler to compiler, but in compiling their data bases groups may change their basic
assumptions over time, making comparison of even their data toilsome, if not invalid. Both the
Rand Corporation 10 and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 11 data collection efforts illustrate
the problem.